THE UNION government has extended the cut-off date for digitisation of arms licenses by the state governments under National Database of Armed Licenses to March 31, 2016 after a few states, including Punjab, failed to upload the arms licenses data under the project. The earlier deadline was September 30.

Under the project, after the details of arms license are entered, a unique identification number is assigned to the license holder.

According to the earlier notification, the licensing and renewing authorities were supposed to enter the data in the electronic automated system developed by the National Informatics Centre for the purpose.

Then, “the aforesaid electronic automated system shall generate a unique number without which no arms license shall be considered as valid with effect from 1st October, 2015”.

In the new notification, dated September 23, 2015 issued by the union Ministry of Home Affairs (a copy of which is with The Indian Express), the date from which arms licenses without unique number would be considered as invalid, has been extended from October 1, 2015 to April 1, 2016, meaning thereby that the new cut off date for entering the arms licenses details under NDAL project is now March 31, 2016.

An official of the Ministry of Home Affairs from Delhi told over the phone that besides Punjab, the other states that could not meet the meet the deadline to enter the arms licenses data under the project included Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

NIC technical director in Punjab R K Tickoo said there were a total of over 4 lakh arms licenses in Punjab and the details for digitisation for “nearly 3.25 lakh” had been entered.

Tickoo said while all the three police commissionerates, namely Amritsar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana had entered the data, there were a number of districts that were lagging behind in entering the data under the project.